1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to improving self-service operation of a contact center, and, in particular, to a system and method for detecting and transitioning a customer from self-service support to agent support.
2. Description of Related Art
Some systems of the known art are able to integrate customer relations management (CRM) processes and back-office data, in order to offer a dynamic and self-service IVR system. Such systems integrate with back-end systems in order to identify customers and prospects and select an appropriate voice treatment according to customer segment and/or status.
Some methods of the known art such as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20130336466 provide a method to dynamically change an IVR system. Responses to a menu of prompts are monitored. Responsive to the responses, a presentation order of the menu of prompts is automatically updated according to a set of rules. The set of rules describes qualifications for dynamically changing the menu of prompts based on the responses.
Some methods of the known art such as U.S. Pat. No. 8,374,327 to Harman et al. provide and manage, for each of a plurality of callers, call handling treatments to callers interacting with an automated call-handling system.
Some methods of the known art, such as U.S. Pat. No. 7,436,948 to Thenthiruperai, determine that a caller may require assistance based solely on the amount of time in an IVR tree. These callers are transferred to an operator where they may end up waiting in a lengthy queue. This could make a frustrated caller more frustrated.
Some methods of the known art, such as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20040264677 to Horvitz et al., transfer a caller to an agent if a likelihood of success is low enough to justify the cost. This may be counterproductive if the caller ends up waiting in a lengthy queue. Systems such as Horvitz embrace a “good enough to keep in IVR” experience.
Therefore, a need exists to provide improved self-service operation of a contact center, and, in particular, to a system and method for detecting and transitioning a customer from self-service support to agent support, in order to provide improved customer satisfaction, and ultimately higher sales and lower operational cost.